1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to a system and method for filtering non-invasively collected data. More particularly, the present invention relates to selectively collecting user event data corresponding to a web page region based upon particular collection threshold settings, and sending the collected user event data to a server to process.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Internet has changed the way that a business presents itself in order to attract and maintain customers. In many cases, a customer may come in contact with a particular business solely through the business' website. In these situations, the website is the business' most important asset in influencing a customer to place an order. For example, a customer may not know of a particular business because the business does not have retail stores near the customer's location. In this example, a customer determines whether to place an order with the business based upon the customer's website experience. In other words, a business' home page and the organization of a business' website may determine whether a customer places an order.
A business attempts to organize its website whereby items of most customer interest are positioned such that a user is not required to click down multiple layers in order to view the item. For example, a customer may be interested in a popular children's toy and if the customer does not see the toy, or a link to the toy, on the business' home page, the customer may not wish to “click” through the business' website in order to find the toy, but rather access another business' homepage that displays the toy.
A challenge found in identifying how users view a business' website, however, is that a business is not able to collect data that identifies which portions (i.e. regions) of a particular web page that a user views. For example, a website may include a Java applet that is loaded to perform a particular function, such as a mortgage calculator, and a user selects a command button in order to access the mortgage calculator. In this example, since the mortgage calculator is a Java applet, the business is not notified when a user selects the mortgage calculator and thus, the business does not know how many users access the mortgage calculator. Therefore, the business does not know the importance of the mortgage calculator to its customers.
In another example, a business may have a long home page that requires a user to scroll down the page in order to view items at the bottom of the home page. In this example, the business identifies that items at the bottom of the home page do not sell as well as items at the top of the home page. The business, however, is not able to determine whether the lesser selling items are being viewed as frequently as the items at the top of the page or whether the lesser selling items are just not as popular as the items at the top of the page.
Furthermore, a challenge found is managing the quantity of user event data that a server receives in order to minimize data repetitiveness for a particular region. For example, a business may receive an over abundance of user event data corresponding to a particular region during a user session in which each user event data includes the same information (i.e. mouse entry in region X). In this example, the business may wish to limit the amount of user event data that is collected for a particular region in order to minimize the repetitiveness of the user event data.
What is needed, therefore, is a system and method to filter user event data that is sent to a server for processing. Furthermore, what is needed is a system and method to filter data based upon predetermined thresholds and based upon which region in the web page is being acted upon by the user.